Indian cricket's darkest day

The game has been shamed no end. The Indian T20 League's core constituency, the millions of passionate fans, are disgusted. May 16, 2013 will certainly go down in history as the darkest day in Indian cricket since the turn of the millennium when this menace was first brought to public eye in the form of Hansiegate.

While the Delhi Police deserve a pat on their back for a job well done, much work is still left undone in doing away with this disease that is once again threatening to corrode the very edifice of our great game.As a result of this expose every action of cricketers in future games will come under the scanner.

A batsman changing his pad will be interpreted as an act of giving a signal to the bookies. A bowler wiping a ball dry will be looked upon with suspicion. In fact, even if a bowler stretches before starting a new spell we'd look at it hoping he isn't trying to take us for a ride.

The ambiance is one of gloom and mistrust. It is one where the very essence of the sport has been jolted. Cricket, because of these criminal actors, has been reduced to a charade and its fans to fools. The more we think that we have been consuming a pre-scripted charade in the name of sport the more determined we become to stay away from this once great game.

Our faith in cricket has been shaken and it will take some doing to restore this faith. More importantly, we need to ask the question if our faith has been destroyed beyond repair? Can we ever watch cricket again without having a sneaking suspicion that all is not well? Finally, can we expect the authorities to show accountability and attempt to get to the root of the problem? Mere handing of bans aren't enough and we need to see intent on the part of the BCCI and the other law enforcing agencies in bringing the corrupt to book.Sreesanth and company have hurt us where it hurts the most.

They have challenged our intelligence and successfully demonstrated that we are idiots who can be toyed with. For these criminals, we, the cricket fan, don't matter.

So what if they are stars because of us? So what if we travel miles to see Sreesanth and co bowl for India and Rajasthan? So what if we are alienating a fan who has spent half his monthly salary to buy a ticket for an Indian T20 League match?

Greed has no end and that's the only thing that explains this criminal act. Sreesanth, a double World Cup medal winner, is better off than 99 percent of Indians. He has a plum contract with Rajasthan, earns enough money from domestic and international cricket and also has a few endorsements to his name. Our naivete will lead us to suggest- how much more money does he need? Why does he need to do this?

Frankly, we are missing the point altogether. Greed has no limits and a demented mind gets a certain thrill out of successfully orchestrating a criminal conspiracy. It was as if they were far more intelligent that the foolishly passionate cricket fan and that, more than anything, must have given these rascals a real high.

Susceptible and vulnerable they colluded with bookies and in the process destroyed their very own careers.

As Sourav Ganguly has right said, "It is stupid and lacks common sense".While some say that the Indian T20 League-Gate and the stunning discoveries over the last two days climaxing with the arrests have signed a death warrant to this noble, gentlemanly sport, it is time to suggest that cricket was never completely free of corruption. It is cricket's hour of shame that compels us to rethink the character of the sport --not just in contemporary society, but in its historical evolution. Are these "beasts" truly a product of our generation? Was cricket really ever a sport far removed from the vices of politics and commerce? History tells a different story, and it is important in the present context that we recount a critical yet different trajectory of the game, before we begin to compose the oft familiar jeremiad.Corruption and vice in cricket can be traced back to the early 1740s.

S.M Toyne establishes this fact in The Early History of Cricket. The author writes, "After the game had become fashionable in the 1740s betting rose to fantastic sums of one thousand pounds or more. Of one match it has been stated that the side bets among spectators and players totaled twenty thousand pounds. In the early part of the nineteenth century the game itself was in danger of ruin since it had become the chief medium for national gambling. Bookmakers attended the matches, odds were called as the fortunes of the game fluctuated, and side bets on the score of individual players led to bribery and cheating. One noted player took hundred pounds to lose a match. Even the Hambledon club was said to have usually staked five hundred pounds on each match."Toyne chronicles contemporary disappointment at the sad plight of the game.

For instance, one Miss Mitford lamented,"I anticipated great pleasure from so grand an exhibition. What a mistake! There they were, a set of ugly old men, white-haired and bald headed. instead of our fine village lads with their unbuttoned collars. which gave an air so picturesque to their glowing bounding youthfulness, their they stood railed in by themselves, silent, solemn, slow-playing for money, making a business of the thing,. a sort of dance without music instead of the glee, the fun, the shouts, the laughter, the glorious confusion of the country game, but everything is spoilt when money puts its stupid nose in.. so be it always when men make the noble game of cricket an affair of betting and hedging and maybe cheating."

So, match-fixing, which appears in recent writings to be a decade long phenomenon is in reality one of the oldest surviving 'gentlemen'. This phenomenon was not restricted to the subcontinent, but was a global affliction initially making its appearance in the very country that gave birth to the game.

Neither should we assume that the match fixing scandal is an isolated occurrence. The global history of sport, especially of games that arouse primal passion among audiences and therefore succeed in attracting huge corporate sponsors, is full of such instances.

The match fixing episodes leading upto the 1919 Black Sox scandal in US baseball offers a striking parallel to the Indian T20 League controversy. A brief look at the commonalities between the two events should give hope to Indian cricket enthusiasts that the reputation of the game is not beyond redemption.

In 1919 the allegations against the Black Sox accused were based on circumstantial evidence, much like the accusations of match fixing against some Indian players. The baseball accused were freed by the judgment of August 2, 1921 due to lack of evidence. But the next day Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landes, in charge of investigations unilaterally suspended the eight suspects including the legendary "shoeless Joe Jackson".

The United States of America, in 1919 was emerging as a capitalist power, in the same way as India today. The forces of the market and capital made their impact on most US sports, baseball being a prime example. Yet Landes managed to purge the lesions affecting baseball, despite the huge odds against him. His efforts have earned him a place in baseball's Hall of Fame. Only the future will show us which official in the BCCI or in the sports ministry achieves such a feat in our country if they do at all.